


At Last

by nerddowell



Series: Stories From The Dance Hall [5]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
Genre: Alternate Universe - The Time Traveler's Wife, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, kind of? mostly?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-07
Updated: 2016-01-07
Packaged: 2018-05-12 10:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5662759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>At last</em>
  <br/>
  <em>My love has come along</em>
</p><p>A canon-era Stucky one-shot based on the song At Last by Ray Eberle (but admittedly, more famously by Etta James).</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Last

**Author's Note:**

> So I downloaded three albums (303 songs!) of 30s & 40s big band/dance hall hits, and I decided to start writing Stucky one shots based on them.
> 
> Enjoy!

In truth, Bucky thinks, it had always been a long time coming.  
  


* * *

  
Ma is calling for him. She's loud, with that tone of exasperation that always accompanies the shouts of _JAMES BUCHANAN BARNES, YOU GET YOURSELF BACK FOR DINNER RIGHT NOW, YOUNG MAN_ , loud enough for all of Brooklyn to hear. Out in the scrap of dying grass and broken fence they all call the park, there's only Bucky and Steve to hear.

Steve is... Well. He's a special friend of Bucky's, who he's not allowed to tell his Ma about. Steve tends to show up naked, after all (and usually bruised, but Bucky doesn't like to ask questions), and his Ma says men who get naked in front of little boys are men to avoid. And Bucky understands; honest, Ma, he does. But Steve is different. Steve has never shown himself to Bucky like that. He hides inside the garbage cans, with the mushy cardboard and the old papers and the scraps and peelings, instead. He waits, until Bucky brings him some spare clothes from the bottom of his Pa's closet, an old shirt and pants that are too short and socks, and odd shoes. Then he climbs out and stands in front of Bucky, skinny body all angles like Bucky's own, and grins.

"Hey, buddy," he says in his deep voice, and Bucky grins and says "Hey, buddy," back, like it's their special code. It's Bucky-speak for _You're back_ , and Steve-speak for _Yeah, buddy_ , and _How've you been?_ and maybe an _I'm sorry_. Steve says it kind of sadly, after all. But then he reaches out and ruffles Bucky's untidy hair, and Bucky scowls, and Steve laughs. That makes Bucky smile. Steve is often sad - too sad, all of the time - so making Steve laugh is important. It makes the sad in his voice go away, and in his eyes, and it makes Bucky feel warm.

Steve groans as he eases down to sit, and something makes a creaking noise somewhere in his body. He sounds like an old man, Bucky thinks, only he doesn't say it. Instead, he sits by Steve and lays his head on Steve's shoulder and just thinks that maybe this time Steve won't have to go.

He watches when Steve sits by the garbage cans and laces his shoes carefully. He was the one to teach Bucky to do it properly, instead of making the rabbit's ears. He taught Bucky a lot of things, useful things, like how to make a slingshot, how to pick locks, and how to make shadow puppets on walls with his fingers and a lamp. Bucky's favourite is the crocodile. He makes his hands snap and pretend to eat Steve's arms for ages, until Steve starts to go dizzy in that way that means he's leaving.

Bucky clings to his arm, but he never gets to come along.  
  


* * *

  
Steve appears every so often. Sometimes he misses Bucky entirely, times when Bucky's at school and there's no way for him to get to the park in time. But Bucky always leaves the set of his father's clothes under a root of a tree, tucked down neat so no one else can take them, and Steve always takes them for as long as he needs. Bucky misses Steve on those days. Well, in truth, he misses Steve every day that he doesn't see him.

His Ma often teases him about his 'imaginary friend', and his Pa asks him all sorts of questions about him, with that twinkle in his brown eyes and the mischievous _let's-you-and-me-share-a-secret_ smile he gives Bucky when he gives him an extra cookie behind Ma's back. Bucky tells them the truth - Steve says that's important; that he should never lie to his Ma and Pa, except about the naked part, which isn't really lying but just... not telling. When he's eight, he tells them more: that Steve is little, and he's real skinny like Bucky, and his hair is about the same length only it's dirty yellow, and his eyes are blue as the skies in summer. He points out of the window, and his Ma says, "Wow, as blue as that?" And Bucky nods.

"As blue as that," and goes back to his potatoes, mashing them with his fork until his Ma slaps the back of his hand gently with her spoon and tells him to stop playing.

Bucky goes to bed that night still damp from his bath, water dripping from his hair, and lays in his bed watching Brooklyn out of the window and wondering whether Steve was maybe a little boy here too, a long time ago.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky is ten, growing up strong like his Pa, and his Ma is always telling him he's a real handsome boy and he's gonna break hearts when he's older. Bucky scrunches his nose up because girls have cooties, Ma, and both she and his Pa laugh and give each other that warm-eyed look, so he flies through the door of their apartment and down the stairs, jumping the bottom three, and out into the road so he can get to the park, because today is a Steve Day according to the calendar on his wall.

Steve gave him a list of days a while back. He had told Bucky the whole list whilst Bucky noted it down in his untidy handwriting, printing carefully but smudging the pencil with the side of his hand. Steve noticed and smiled, calling him a 'lefty,' and then told Bucky that _his_ Pa, way back when, was a lefty too. Bucky had frowned and held out the pencil, demanding that Steve write the rest down, and saw a tidy list of numbers all written in Steve's right hand, which was disappointing. Bucky has always wanted to be like Steve, in every way possible, and this was just another thing in which he was never going to fulfil that goal.

Anyway. Back to the present, as Steve would say. Bucky skids around the corner of the building and wriggles through the gap in the fence to see Steve, and there he is, in Bucky's Pa's shirt and the mismatched shoes. "Hey, buddy." Bucky beams at him, running full-pelt, and knocks Steve over as he tackles him into a hug, with Steve laughing and stroking his hair and telling him to _get offa me, you big lump_.

"Hey, buddy," Bucky says back, same as always, as he scrambles up, dusting the dirt off his knees. He is getting big now. Steve is still all the same, awful little for a man his age, and the cough he had last time apparently hasn't cleared up either. He doesn't look well, but he's smiling all the same and telling Bucky to show him his muscles, since he's so big and strong now. Bucky flexes proudly like he's seen the men at the docks do, and Steve has a pretend-serious face on as he squeezes Bucky's skinny arm, and then laughs.

"Real strong, Bucky. You're gonna start winning our arm-wrestling contests soon."

"I already do," Bucky says smugly, and Steve knocks his shoulder gently with a roll of his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, big man, so you do." He smiles at Bucky. "What do you wanna be when you're older, Buck?"

Bucky likes it when Steve calls him _Buck_. Technically, Steve's the only one who even calls him 'Bucky'; it's always James at home and at school, and his friends on the playground call him 'Barnes' because it makes them all feel real grown up when they call each other by last names only. Only Steve gets Bucky. It's another piece of their friendship, something he can keep all to himself, like all the meanings of _Hey, buddy_.

"I dunno," Bucky shrugs, kicking at stones. They're sat on an old bench now, decrepit and full of splinters, and Steve is watching the sky like he always does when he asks Bucky questions like that. Bucky doesn't like it. He's never liked it when Steve asks about when he gets older, because then he gets like this and then he disappears again. Bucky touches Steve's arm gently, trying to pull him back. "What did you wanna be when you were older, when you were little?" He frowns. That didn't make sense.

Steve smiles at him. "I get it. No, I wanted to be a soldier," he says, "like my dad. He was a soldier in a war a long time ago, but he got... hurt... so he didn't come back."

"Sorry," Bucky says, at a loss. He looks up at the sky. "Maybe I should be a soldier. You think?"

"I think you'd be a real good soldier, big strong boy like you," Steve tells him, and Bucky beams. "C'mon, Private Barnes," Steve says, "let's go get some ice-cream."

Bucky gets strawberry, and it's so sweet he can taste it on his tongue hours later when Steve has gone and he's looking out of his window with the tears rolling down his face as he crosses off the last day on his Steve-calendar.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky grows up. By the time he's eighteen, he's broad across the shoulders like his Ma said he would be, and he's real handsome, or so the girls say when he takes them out dancing, with his hair slicked back with pomade and his shoes shined real high until they're like mirrors. He's a good dancer, and he's a better kisser, and some of the girls let him get further than that, although he always treats them like ladies, because his Ma raised him to be a gentleman. He still misses Steve a little, a lot, most of the time - but he doesn't think on it.

He's never stopped wanting to be a soldier. He remembers when he was little - eight long, long years ago - when he turned up at home, strawberry ice cream still smudged in the corners of his lips guiltily, and announced to his Ma that he was gonna be a soldier when he was older. She'd nodded and said, "Sure, James," and thought no more of it, he's sure. But now, 1942 and the US at war, she's thinking more and more, and she's started kissing him goodbye every morning like she's worried it's the last time. He's reminded of himself and Steve, hanging onto Steve's hand like a tiny vice, and having the hand pulled out of his grasp by nothing at all. He wonders if his Ma feels the same when he gives her that forced smile and turns his head so she only brushes his cheek.

He gets called up after a couple of months. Comes home in his uniform, all brass and green wool, smart as a new penny, and his Ma's eyes fill with tears. She's real proud, she chokes from behind her hanky, and his Pa gives him a heavy smile and a hand on his shoulder, but Winifred Barnes stays sat at the kitchen table and hugs little Becky to her like she's never gonna let this child go. She can't stop seeing Bucky as the one she's already losing. He's not sure she's not right.  
  


* * *

  
He shows himself to be an excellent sharpshooter at training, and gets drafted into the rifles. There are some real assholes in his unit, for sure, but he can't complain. They're a company. It's their job to get this shit done, win this war so all of them - Bucky included - can get back home to mas, pas, siblings and sweethearts. He's seen some of them with lockets in their pockets, or strung around their necks next to their dog tags, pictures of wives and girlfriends kept behind those silver doors. Ferman's is a real looker, a beautiful brunette with striking green eyes like Vivien Leigh. Ferman's a lucky guy.

Bucky doesn't have any photographs to put in a locket. He keeps his dog tags around his neck, and a crumpled list in his pocket, illegible from the years of fingers smoothing the creases.  
  


* * *

  
The European Theatre isn't at all how he imagined. Not that he can see much of it from the murky green windows of the cell he's kept in; strapped to the table like a lamb to the slaughter, head burning, marks all over his arms from the constant injections they give him. Green fluid that makes his blood fire and his limbs ice, and his head a ball of rock that feels heavy enough to drop clean through the table. He's so tired he can barely open his eyes, can barely muster the energy to breathe. A clatter at the door barely registers until he hears voices.

His own - thin, cracked, husky - and another, one he hasn't heard for years.

This man is tall, much taller than he remembers, and broader even than Bucky. Huge strong shoulders, chest tight with muscles under the leather uniform, helmet jammed over the floppy mess of blond hair he remembers - but those eyes. He twitches a finger towards the window, as much effort as he can muster. As blue as that?

"As blue as that," he mumbles to himself, or maybe it's a _Hey, buddy_ , because Steve's face cracks into a smile and that's exactly what he says back, as though nothing has changed at all.

"Hey, buddy." Steve snaps his manacles like they're nothing, which Bucky doesn't even think about, and pulls him up off the table into his arms, slinging Bucky's weak limbs over his shoulders and hauling him to his feet. Bucky goes, but he stares at Steve with eyes that take a long time to focus, tired and blurry from imprisonment.

"I thought you were dead," Steve says, and Bucky almost smiles. _Hey, buddy_.

"I thought you were smaller." _You're back_.

The factory is disintegrating around them when Steve pushes him across that beam, insisting that he pass first. The flames are roaring, licking at Bucky's skin, and the sweat's dripping down into his eyes, leaving rivulets through the caked-on grime of soot and general gunk. He only just manages to jump at the last moment, to catch hold of the barriers and drag himself up on weak, shaking arms. Steve is on the other side, stranded, calling for him to go. Bucky refuses.

"No! Not without you!"

He had to leave so often as a child. Or rather, had to let himself be left, when Steve had to go, in that dizzy rush that made his face turn pale and his eyes roll back in his head a little before his hand disappeared from Bucky's iron grasp, his child's reach still extended towards the empty space Steve's heart had left, and salt and strawberries on his tongue. No more, Bucky swears to himself, and stands right there in that burning building, clutching metal railings that sear the palms of his hands, as he watches Steve take that jump into the gaping abyss between the past and the future.  
  


* * *

  
Bucky takes his own jump not long after. Less of a jump, though, than a fall. He plummets off that train still reaching for Steve's hand, just like years ago.

 

* * *

  
Bucky wakes. He's in a hospital bed, a glimmer of silver in the corner of his vision. His rifle? He raises his hand to pick it up, but the silver moves with it, and he sees that the silver is him; or part of him at least. A brand new arm.

He screams, loud enough to bring the orderlies running, and recognises the uniforms of the guards around him. The first man to get close is the first man whose blood will end up staining that arm; will end up staining Bucky, as the Winter Soldier.  
  


* * *

  
He wakes. He does what they want, always what they want, and he sits in the chair and he screams and he forgets and he's put back in his chamber to freeze.

He wakes. The cycle repeats.  
  


* * *

  
Except when it doesn't.

He is woken and the world outside is again unfamiliar. It always is. He knows his target, the man in the black van with the eyepatch and the S.H.I.E.L.D. apparatus. The mission is simple. They can't risk giving him complex assignments; he's the tool, not the agent. The Asset. A weapon, trained and sentient and skilled, but nothing more. He does as he's told; stops the van, blows it almost sky-high; watches the pillars of flames with a cocked head like a spaniel, eyes dull behind the mask. He can't breathe through it properly, and the goggles restrict his vision similarly; but Hydra can't afford a dead Asset any more than they can afford a failed mission. He stalks towards the car, peers in through the window. Nothing. The man is gone.

He tries again, later, in an apartment. Bullets through the wall, silencer, crashes inside and a blond - large, muscle-bound, blue-eyed - racing after him, shield on his arm. The man throws it, a Frisbee, and he catches. Throws it back, and drops off the side of the building like a stone, melting into Brooklyn seamlessly as footsteps echo above on the rooftop.

They meet again on a bridge, when he and the rest of the team open fire. Cars are honking as the metal hull of a car screeches across the blacktop in a shower of sparks; he watches, cold-eyed, behind the infrared goggles. Bullet casings litter the ground as he flips his knife from one hand to the next, sparring, toying with him, almost. A name that hasn't belonged to anyone but a ghost for years is suddenly breathed into the air -

"Bucky?"

\- and that ghost materializes, an ten year old boy with tears smudged over his face, reaching out to empty space. Flickers of voices. As blue as that? Maybe I should be a soldier. Hey, buddy.

He looks at the blond again, and remembers something else. Not a name, but a feeling of knowing something different and yet like himself. They are a pair, somehow.

He turns, fires, and disappears into the smoke.  
  


* * *

  
He asks, the next time they put him into the chair. He's strapped down with nothing but memories flashing through his mind, faster and faster, insensate to the dingy tiled room of his prison until the blow comes and it rings in his ears, even louder than the sound of the blond's voice.

He realises what he was wondering earlier on the bridge.

When he wakes up, he is somewhere he doesn't know, after what feels only like closing his eyes.

Is that how Steve feels?  
  


* * *

  
The helicarrier is like the building from years ago. It crumbles around them, explosions ringing in their ears, flames burning somewhere deep inside its mechanical gullet, threatening to swallow them both. He has been crushed beneath a steel beam, and he has held the blond over a hole in the deck with his metal fist raised and the other pinning his throat to the glass, feeling the weightlessness in his stomach of a plummeting free-fall. They will crash, he and this man, the pair of them, crash into cold and damp and wonder, perhaps, if this is where they had always belonged.

They are men out of time, neither by choice nor through fault.

The man's eyes are swollen half-closed. He looks up at him through webbed dark eyelashes, a soft smile on his bloodied lips, and whispers, _Hey, buddy_ , before the glass shatters and he falls, far enough to be lost to Bucky for the final time.  
  


* * *

  
He pulls him out of the river. It's too cold, freezing even, although both of them have been on ice and it is not yet cold enough to have sheened over with patterns of icicles. Time is slow around them, slower than it has ever been. They are still finding their bearings in this new century.

But Steve stirs, opens his eyes, and Bucky stays; he only whispers, _As blue as that_ , and grins. In truth, he thinks, it had always been a long time coming.


End file.
